A purity no mind can grasp.

My name is Joseph. I'm from SoCal. I love God, the Catholic Church, CFCY, my Filipino heritage, hardcore, pop punk, metalcore, rap, R&B, poetry, Harry Potter, Pope John Paul II, and krump. So...does that make me typical?

Depositum Fidei: Catholicism 102: Our Father

depositumfidei:

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

One of the most pivotal prayers that Catholics must know is called the Our Father. In the book of Matthew, Jesus taught his apostles how to pray this simple prayer. Simple as it may sound, this prayer contains the foundation of the Catholic faith, and reveals what it means to be a Christian, in the most subtle way. For such a short, simple prayer, it contains a lot of wisdom to learn from.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
- We acknowledge the one God to have the title, as well as the personality, of a Father. One who resides in Heaven. “Hallowed” means holy, so this line is to say that even God’s name is sacred. If you know Jewish culture and tradition, you’ll know that names are a big deal. In the Old Testament, people’s names have been changed when God would personally appoint them to something epic. For example, Abram had his name changed to Abraham by God Himself when God decided to establish a covenant with Abraham. Also, in Jewish culture, God has many names He goes by - Hashem, Adonai, Elohim, etc. But God’s true name - YHVH - is so holy and sacred, that no one in Jewish culture is allowed to say it, but replace it with Adonai (my Lord). Only the high priests of Jewish tradition would be allowed to utter God’s name during Yom Kippur. So, in essence, God’s name is literally holy - hallowed.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
- This first line emphasizes a request that Jewish culture often asks of God - that He will bring His kingdom to Earth. In particular, it is prayed that God’s kingdom is brought to Earth by a Messiah figure - the redeemer of the Jewish people from an extensive history of losing battles and being oppressed by other kingdoms.  We pray that we can work towards establishing a Heaven on Earth so that we can become closer to God even before death.

Give us this day our daily bread.
- We pray for God to give us the necessities of the day. In biblical times, bread was often a symbol for survival and sustenance, both spiritually and physically. We don’t ask for a feast or a meal, we just ask for bread - we ask for enough to survive for the next day. In essence, that is what the Eucharist, the bread and wine we receive during mass on Sundays, is to us - our spiritual bread that we need in order to be spiritually sustained and strengthened.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
- In the book of Matthew, Jesus actually elaborates on this. Jesus expressed that a person must forgive someone who’s done him or her wrong, otherwise, God Himself won’t forgive a man’s transgressions. What most people may not know is that the concept of unconditional forgiveness was radically new in the Jewish community as well as the pagan community of the Romans. When the Bible was being compiled, “forgiveness” as the modern world knows it as now didn’t mean the same thing when it was being translated. When the Bible was being translated from Hebrew to Greek, the word “forgiveness” originally meant “to forget one’s debt”. Eventually, the concept of forgiveness evolved as Christianity grew in size and intelligence.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
- In this last line, we pray for God to help us stay away from temptations that we feel may pull us away from Him. A concept in Christianity that is popular thanks to the book of Job is this idea that God gives us obstacles in life that could either bring us closer or further away from Him. The last line of this prayer asks that God saves us from whatever we fall under, should we choose to sin. Personally, I see the last line as a step we take that requires the most amount of faith, when said sincerely. We ask for God to help us with our inadequacies, even though we’ll never be perfect, yet we still ask Him to bring us out when we fall too far. No matter what point we are in our lives, we still ask for God to be a part of it, in the good times and bad.

One of the…

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